flamesium

I think a take on the regular party combat except with ships could have been very fun. I'm not convinced that would have taken an excessive amount of work to be honest with you. They've already done a lot of the work (ship gear, crew xp etc.) and most of the required mechanics can be lifted from the party combat.

It probably wouldn’t feel so thin on the ground if you couldn’t blitz through most of it so easily.

You get more as you level up. Some gear and rest bonuses can increase your max resources. Some abilities can replenish resources.

I agree that the faction side of things ends up being the real 'main story'. The Eothas / Wheel thread still could have been a bit more involved however, or at least a little less vague.

It seems likely that the Rauatai storms were also deliberately hiding some Wheel related mechanism the Engwithans didn't want found. It could even be why the Rauatai split off from the Aumauans in the first place. Perhaps they were originally sent there to protect whatever is hidden, as the Aumauans were tasked with protecting the secrets of the Deadfire. Perhaps this task is the true meaning behind the Tanvii ora Toha, the Rauatain sacred text which originated from the Engwithans.

Can confirm you can take the ghost ship to the finale without siding with the pirates. You may have to kill both of the pirate leaders though idk.

Have you made sure the pet AI is turned on? It's seperate to the ranger. Also it has a habit of turning itself off on map transitions.

Isn't Turning Wheel for melee attacks only? You're right, I was thinking more for the +10 Int bonus for stacking Wounds, which only needs Duality.

I finished Tyranny but couldn't tell you anything that happened in it.

They're decent with a few points spent in the ranger tree, and if you have other frontliners drawing some of the heat. If nothing else they're a health bar the enemy has to run down before they can get to you.

My first run was on Veteran and I enjoyed it. I started a second run on PotD but it becomes trivial once you have a few levels. I think the balance is so ridiculously far off (did they test at all?) that it's not really something they can just handwave away and get to it when they get to it. They can do a more nuanced balance pass at their leisure, but in the very short term a quick and dirty patch just adding 3 levels to every enemy in PotD would be a significant improvement.

I expect they spent far more making Deadfire than they raised from the Fig campaign. They also added full voice acting during development which won't have been cheap. They'll be needing decent sales to break even I would think. With a publisher involved Obsidian won't be carrying all of the risk though.

yeap i'm eyeing on dance of death since i'm range. i'm wondering how useful DEX is. should i pump on MIG instead? More attacks is better imo, but tbh you can just max both by dumping Con & Res as far as you need to. With the game balanced as it is you aren't going to need Con or Res at all.

Peak is almost always always on release for something like this, short of exceptional circumstances. An exceptional circumstance could be that it is an Obsidian game. From all the Obsidian fans I know, I was the only one who jumped unto it. Most of them are waiting for patch or two. I waited for a bit with PoE1 as well. They won't all happen to jump in at the same time though, so while patches might cause sales to pick up in general there's no chance it would be enough to overtake the release peak. According to SteamCharts, Pillars 1 achieved ~42k peak around launch, then the second highest peak was ~8k during the recent Deadfire-release sale. Exceptional circumstances would need to be something like a huge, unexpected piece of media coverage, or say a 90% off sale (at which point the sales spike wouldn't really matter). Or maybe the addition of an unexpectedly successful multiplayer component, which doesn't seem likely.

1st tier: Max Dex & Per 2nd tier: Might & Int Dump: Con & Res Take Dance of Death and Turning Wheel. Yes that combination should adequately break the game.

It's still quite a big deal for everyone to suddenly have incontrovertible proof that the 'gods' were manufactured and that they've been deliberately misled for generations. I think most would be less inclined to worship a construct of a previous civilisation than they would a 'natural' God. The destruction and subsequent study / replacement of The Wheel may also reveal a weakness in the 'gods' that can be exploited. It's likely the gods have been maintained by skimming off the soul energy passing through The Wheel. This may ultimately lead to Kith having to decide whether they want to keep the gods, limit the gods, or get rid of them entirely. The gods themselves may have to decide whether to ensure their survival by justifying their continued existence to Kith as they rebuild/replace The Wheel, or by throwing down on Kith and forcing them into it. This would no doubt lead to a split in the pantheon of the gods, as well as among the various Kith factions.

Peak is almost always always on release for something like this, short of exceptional circumstances.

Helwalker, Dance of Death, Turning Wheel... Monks have plenty which can be used to make some incredible multi-class builds.

I think it’s struggling to appeal beyond the group of people who played and finished PoE1, as expected. It’s hard to tell exactly how well it’s sold, but the player data on Steam Charts isn’t encouraging imo, assuming it’s at all accurate. The peak player number for the last 24 hours and (all-time peak): Deadfire: 8,714 (22,639) Pillars 1: 5,487 (41,787) Divinity: OS 2: 11,576 (93,350) I suppose the best news there is the shot in the arm Pillars 1 has received. Given the rate at which people bounce right off of Pillars however, I don’t know if we can assume they will finish it and go on to purchase Deadfire.

Litany of Spirit will cancel it out on an individual, or I guess the chanter invo that gives Brilliant. I haven’t had my whole group dominated in one go though, usually only one or two.

I quite liked the idea from PoE & WM, where you had to be a bit more choosy about which items you upgraded as far as they could go. When 'Magran's Fires' are added I hope one of the options is to disable unique gear.

I haven't tested, but if you build a Barb right you're hardly going to be encountering recovery time as it is by that stage. Barbaric Smash and Blood Thirst will take care of that.

The real question is... should a Fire Godlike's head be made a light source?

Wael would probably make his Godlike just look like regular people so nobody knew.

I agree it's a strange choice, I am just using the language the game uses. That said, I believe there are still significant differences between (human) races, though not to the extent which exists between male and female. Look at the Olympic 100m final, or the breakdown of the NFL by race compared to the breakdown of the US population. Probably there are significant differences in favour of other races too, but in the current climate it's just easier to pretend they don't exist even if they do. As for differences between 'species', the only real difference between it being fine to imply significant differences between species but not between genders is that there are no Orlan or Aumaua around to complain. By ignoring the clear physical superiority of (average) adult human males over adult human females, the devs have gone for inclusion and a quiet life over attempting to represent reality. Given this is a fantasy game that's fine. If they were claiming to be making a historical RPG it might be different. We very much live in a 'feelings over reality' phase at the moment. Whether this stands the test of time or is just a phase remains to be seen.